Internet-TV service expands to Boston and surrounding area

NEW YORK -- Aereo, the television-over-the-Internet service that is threatening the broadcast and cable TV industries, is expanding to Boston on May 15.

With prices starting at $8 a month, Aereo will offer 28 Boston-area broadcast channels, plus the cable channel Bloomberg TV. Service will be available in Boston and surrounding areas in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont.

The Barry Diller-backed company announced in January that it plans to expand beyond New York to 22 additional U.S. markets. Boston represents the first metropolitan area outside New York.

Aereo converts television signals into computer data and sends them over the Internet to subscribers’ computers and mobile devices. Subscribers can watch channels live or record them with an Internet-based digital video recorder. They can pause and rewind live television, just like a DVR.

Aereo sells its service as a low-cost alternative to cable or satellite TV, and it plans to target those who have dropped pay-TV service or never had one.

Aereo’s Boston expansion will initially be available only to those who had pre-registered for the service. The New York-based company said others would be able to join after May 30.

Subscribers must live in one of 16 counties: Barnstable, Dukes, Essex, Middlesex, Nantucket, Norfolk, Plymouth, Suffolk, or Worcester in Massachusetts; Belknap, Cheshire, Hillsborough, Merrimack, Rockingham or Strafford counties in New Hampshire; or Windham County in Vermont.

TALK TO US

If you'd like to leave a comment (or a tip or a question) about this story with the editors, please
email us. We also welcome letters to the editor for publication; you can do that by
filling out our letters form and submitting it to the newsroom.